


Some Music Needs Air

by slightly_ajar



Series: Domesticities [5]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Found Family, Friendship, Mac does an impression of Jack, Road Trips, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 10:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18496846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightly_ajar/pseuds/slightly_ajar
Summary: Part of my Domesticities series of one shots based around little domestic moments.Riley struggles to deal with the aftermath of a mission going wrong.  Mac find a way to help her that is unconventional but is just what she needs.“Riles, I understand how you feel, after Zoe-” Mac paused.   Waited for the rush of grief and regret to subside.  Cleared his throat.  “After Zoe.” he said simply, “I understand.”“Please don’t.  Don’t be nice to me Mac. I’m sorry, I know you want to be supportive but I’m only just keeping it together and I can’t -” Riley took a step back from Mac.  “I can’t hold it together if you are nice to me.”





	Some Music Needs Air

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are welcomed, loved and adored. 
> 
> Chair dancing was involved in writing of this story. No one was injured in the process, except maybe my dignity :)

Mac once found a feral cat while on a camping trip with his grandfather. The tabby had one white sock and a torn ear and the noise she’d made when Mac had stumbled across her crouched under a bush had been something he’d never forgotten. She’d hissed and yowled, low and full of such furious venom that he’d backed away from her despite the fact that she looked like his neighbours friendly and completely spoiled house cat. Mr Muffin McFluffy-Paws, who could usually be found sprawled out in a patch of sunlight, had never made any sound other than a rumbling satisfied purr

“She must have babies, son.” Mac’s grandfather had rested a hand on his shoulder. “She’s letting us know that she’s ready and willing to defend them. You see that?” He nodded at the cat’s bared teeth and the hackles that were raised like vicious thorns. “She’s telling is to back off, so let’s do that.” He drew Mac away. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” he crooned to the wide eyed cat as they slowly withdrew, “we’re not going to hurt you or your babies, everything is going to be okay.” 

Riley was staring into the window of the medical bay of the Phoenix and she looked, Mac took in the taunt muscles of her back and how her fingernails were digging into the windowsill her hands clutched, just like that frantic, frightened animal. If she’d had hackles they would be raised like spines that promised to draw blood from anyone who came too close. 

“Riley?” Mac approached her as if she was a wounded animal, slowly and carefully with his hands hanging loosely by his side. “Ri?” 

“Don’t Mac.” Riley snapped, her eyes fixed on the medical staff working behind the window. “Just don’t okay. Just-” A muscle in her jaw tensed and she drew the sharp edge out of her voice, “please don’t.” 

“It wasn’t-”

“Don’t tell me that it wasn’t my fault. Don’t tell me that the intel was bad, or that I couldn’t have known what was going to happen. It’s my job to find those things out. I should have double and triple checked before I sent the agents in, I should have hacked another camera or looked at a different feed before I green lit the op. I should have been sure it was safe” 

“Everything indicated that it was safe for those agents to go in, everyone in the War Room thought so. Sometimes missions just go sideways, things go wrong, it happens to everyone, even you.” 

Riley slammed her hand onto the glass in front of her, the thud it made echoed around the hushed corridor. “It didn’t happen to me though did it? It happened to them.” She pointed into the room where two agents were being treated. 

Chloe Benjamin was new to the Phoenix, Mac had led her induction training and he’d liked her. She was smart, keen to learn and had a wicked sense of humour. Her eye for detail and ability to read people had prompted Mac to recommend her for interrogation training. Her partner Rob Bareilles had been with the Phoenix from before it was DXS. He preferred the tried and tested methods of getting things done and could come across as being a little staid but he was steadfast, principled and dependable, and his wife made an amazing lemon drizzle cake that he sometimes brought in for the break room. Bozer had asked for the recipe. 

“The doctor said that they are both going to be okay.” 

“Eventually. The doctor said that they’ll both be okay eventually.” 

Riley tuned away from the battered and bloodied pair who were wrapped in dressings and the best medical care a clandestine spy agency could provide to face Mac. “And even if they are okay tomorrow. They’re not okay now. Because of me.” 

Riley’s voice broke on the last word and she scrubbed angrily at her eyes with a fist. 

“Riles, I understand how you feel, after Zoe-” Mac paused. Swallowed. Waited for the rush of grief and regret to subside. Cleared his throat. “After Zoe.” he said simply, “I understand.” 

“Please don’t. Don’t be nice to me Mac. I’m sorry, I know you want to be supportive but I’m only just keeping it together and I can’t -” Riley took a step back from Mac. “I can’t hold it together if you are nice to me.” 

She held up a hand, its palm towards Mac, keeping him the comfort he offered at bay. Her body was tensed for fight or flight, a cornered wildcat poised to attack for defence, but her eyes swam with tears and the hand that she had raised to keep Mac away trembled. 

“Fine, I won’t try to help you.” Mac held up his arms as though he was surrendering. “You can help me. I have an errand I need to run, you should come.” He kept his expression as bland and neutral as possible. 

“What?” Riley obviously expected counter arguments about how the incident wasn’t her fault, offers of tea and sympathy or for Mac to forget all his instincts of self-preservation and try to hug her. His indifference took her totally by surprise. Her forehead folded into confused furrows. “You have an errand?” 

“Yeah.” He walked past her and called over his shoulder. “Are you coming?” 

“We can’t just leave.” 

Mac turned, walking backwards along the corridor, and called to Riley. “Matty said to go home didn’t she?” His back bumped into the wall and Mac pressed the call button next to him to summon the elevator. “Hurry up!” 

Riley looked around her like she was searching for a clue to Mac’s behaviour. The elevator dinged as it arrived and when its metal door slid open Mac saw the confusion on Riley’s face morph into acceptance. She shook her head with a sigh. “Okay, I’m coming. Let’s get on with whatever you are planning.” 

“No plans, just errands.” 

  
  


They pulled out of the Phoenix parking lot in Mac’s jeep in silence. Riley stiff and fragile in the seat beside Mac, staring out her window at the passing traffic. Mac didn’t fill the hush, allowing Riley a moment in the quiet to breath. 

He knew the burning horror of feeling responsible for the wounds of another. The relentless, twisting shards of guilt and anguish that accompanied the burden of thinking that it was your fault, that if only you’d been faster or smarter or better the terrible thing that caused suffering would never have happened. He understood wanting to curl up into a ball and wanting to beat at the wall with bloodied fists; wanting to scream at the unfairness of it all and wanting to waste away and never speak again. He felt like he had an insight into how animals caught in snares were able to gnaw of their own limbs to get away, because the pain of escape had to be better than the agony of being in a trap that was cutting you to the bone, even if the trap was off your own making and in your head. 

Moving helped. Mac found running helped clear his head or if he was too injured or tried to move his body he would move his hands by gathering some of the different things he had stored in the house together to build with. 

“I thought you said you had an errand you needed to run.” Riley straightened as she realised the road they were on was leading them out of the city and along the coast road. 

“I did.” 

“When I do errands I go to the post office or the bank. I don’t go, what are we doing, surfing?” 

“I’m not heading out to catch waves, I’m running an errand.” 

Riley made a disgruntled face and jabbed a finger at the ocean swelling and waning beside the road. 

Mac laughed at her aggravated expression and relented. “Bozer wanted to make smoothies and asked me to pick up some strawberries on the way home. There’s a stall this way that sells fresh ones.” 

“You can buy fruit at the supermarket.” 

“I thought this would be more scenic.” 

“So this road trip is for smoothie supplies?” 

“Of course, what else would it be for?” 

Riley flopped back in her seat and gave Mac a side eye. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re weird?” 

“You may be surprised to hear this but it has come up once or twice. And that was just today.” 

Riley’s laughed. 

Mac reached out and turned on his car radio, flicking through the stations until he found the one he was looking for. The chorus of All Right Now by Free filled the car and Riley looked over at Mac with narrowed eyes. 

“You don’t mind having the radio on do you?” Mac asked, blinking at Riley with an innocent smile. 

“No, I don’t mind.” She pulled out her phone and flicked through her messages, her fingernail tapping against the screen as she read. 

“Is everything okay?” 

“There’s a text from Matty. Chloe and Rob are stable. They are going to keep them in Medical for observation but they should be able to go home in the next couple of days. They’ll need some time off but they’re expected to make full recoveries.” 

“Good.” Mac nodded, relieved. He was hearted to hear that the two agents were going to be okay, the loss of members of the Phoenix family always hit hard, and he hoped that maybe the news would help ease Riley’s worry. He wanted to ask if she was okay but bit back the words, knowing she would huff, bluster and insist that she was fine and hadn’t he said that he wasn’t going to try to comfort her? 

The first notes of a new song rang out from the radio and Riley’s head lifted up and away from her phone to glare the speakers then up at Mac. “What radio station is this?” She asked as Don Henley started to sing about the Boys of Summer. 

“It plays the classics. It’s one of Jack’s favourite. He tunes into it if he forgets his mix CDs.” Mac shrugged. “You’re the one who called his a road trip, the music this station plays are all road trip songs.” He twitched his shoulders, jutted out his jaw and dropped his voice to roll out his next words in his best Jack Dalton drawl. “Road trips are all about the tunes, man!” 

“This song reminds me of being at kid sat in my mom’s car heading to the mountains for a weekend away. I think Jack was the one driving. He and my mom were singing along while I was in the back thinking I was way to cool to have to deal with the pair of them.” The happy memory softened Riley, a spark of light replaced the dull dread in her eyes. 

Mac leaned towards her, his Jack impression back in place and joined with the song, “You’ve got the top pulled down and the radio on baby.” He sang, and winked. 

The traffic on the road was light and Mac picked up speed as Bryan Adams remembered the summer of 69. The sun glinted off the ocean as it shone in a blue sky and Riley drew in a deep breath and exhaled with a heavy sigh that sounded as though she had opened a door to let air rush though an room that had been dusty and locked up for too long. 

The journey really was beautiful, Mac thought, as the road twisted sinuously thought the landscape, he didn’t come along there enough. He’d driven that way with Jack before with no destination in mind, just for the salty smell of the ocean, the rugged beauty of nature and for the feel of the wind in their hair. 

Bryan Adams’ reminiscences ended and as Tom Petty started Freefallin’ Mac was struck by inspiration. “Some music needs air,” he said, “roll down your windows.” 

The wind whistled through the jeep when they opened their windows, rushing around them and lifting Riley’s hair to twist it up around her head and into her face. She pulled it into a loose bun at the base of her neck and smiled, closing her eyes to feel the breeze against her skin. 

The roar of the air gusting over them was so loud that talking became difficult. If they wanted to speak to each other they would have had to yell to be heard, but since Riley didn’t wanted to talk and Mac wanted her to just sit back and feel and _be_ that suited them both just fine. The song reached the chorus and Mac reached out to turn the volume up, quirking an eyebrow at Riley in a challenge. She jerked her chin to accept and they both took a breath and joined in, singing into the wind. 

Another car came towards them in the opposite direction, the driver had his windows down too with his elbow resting on the door frame. He was singing, his hand drumming out a beat on the steering wheel and when they passed Mac heard a flash of the music he was playing. The burst of sound wasn't long enough for Mac to be able to tell what song the driver was listening to but was loud enough to know that he had turned the volume up until he could feel the bass in his bones. Mac felt a burst of kinship for him, another traveller on the same road following a different journey. 

Freefallin’ ended and both Mac and Riley turned to the radio in anticipation for the next song. When the opening chords of Born to Run rang out they met each other’s eyes with delighted grins and they joined in with Bruce Springsteen with fervour. Mac pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator, he absolutely couldn’t help himself, and they sped onwards, the landscape a blur beside them and the open road ahead of them filled with promise and potential. 

“Highway's jammed with broken heroes, on a last chance power drive, everybody's out on the road tonight but there's no place left to hide.” They sang together and Mac’s heart rose with the sparking electric energy that Springsteen was singing about, Jack Kerouac had written about and that Jack had crowed about whenever they were in the GTO on a stretch of open road with the top down and his favourite mix CDs playing. He felt the way imagined it would be like in NASAs reduced-gravity aircraft when the pilots altered it’s flight to make the passengers float around in the fuselage as the conditions mimicked weightlessness. He felt light, untethered and free, like he was exactly where he should be, that everything was right and good and the things to come would be better. 

A vague thought about contacting the Phoenix passed through his mind but he brushed it aside. He’d sent Matty and Bozer a text explaining where he and Riley were going before they’d left the building, and he felt like getting out his phone to contact the rest of the world would break the liberating spell that he had Riley had woven around themselves. 

Bruce Springsteen was replaced by David Bowie and Riley moved in her seat, shifting her shoulders in time to Rebel Rebel as Mac tapped his foot along to the beat. 

“You like me, and I like it all, we like dancing and we look divine,” they sang and Riley stretched, her arms reaching above her head and her back arching with feline grace, she held the tension in her body for a long moment then dropping back into her seat. When her muscles relaxed she lost the frantic, guilty appearance that had been hounding her. She still looked tired but no longer seemed strained and hunted. She stretched out her legs and shuffled until she had positioned herself into a comfortable lounge in the passenger seat 

Riley closed her window and gestured for Mac for to do the same when the song ended and a commercial started. The absence of the sound of the wind pressed against their ears and Riley turned the radio down, reducing the annoying jingle to background noise. 

“Thanks, Mac. Thank you for this.” She gestured to the car, the road and the blue, green and brown blur of the scenery. 

Mac ticked up a shoulder in the suggesting of a shrug. “I’m just running an errand. Nothing special.” 

“Whatever you say.” 

“If you liked this you can come with me to collect my dry cleaning tomorrow.” 

Riley tipped her head to the side and smiled at him, grateful and fond. 

The commercial ended and the opening bars of Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac began. Riley scrunched up her forehead and curled up her lip in the internationally accepted sign for _‘really?_ ’ Mac threw up a hand in the internally recognised response of _‘pfffft, why not?’_

Riley rolled her eyes and opened her window, stretching her hand out of the car and twisting her wrist to allow the wind to run over and through her finger, then she reached out and turned the radio up. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title and the line, “Some music needs air, roll down your windows” come from the movie Elizabethtown.
> 
> Don’t worry about Chloe Benjamin and Rob Bareilles, they’re both fine. They both needed some weeks away from work to heal but they made full recoveries. Chloe re-read Jane Eyre, she’d hated it when she read it in High School and had been meaning to revisit it for years. She found that without the pressure of having to analyse the text for an assignment she loved it. She also took up needle point and started making samplers with movie quotes and rude words on. She made Matty a cushion for her birthday with the quote, “No fighting in the War Room!” from Dr Strangelove on which Matty loved and kept in her office. Chloe insists that having the patience to poke at something over and over again to get the result she wants helped her with her interrogation training. Rob started helping his wife in the kitchen to pass the time and help regain the strength in his right leg. He discovered a love for baking and is on a mission to create the perfect chocolate ginger cookie. Bozer has been brought in as a technical consultant. One of them started watching the series Teen Wolf reluctantly out of boredom one day and became obsessed with it, mainlining the enter show in a week. It wasn’t the one that you think…
> 
> The songs Mac and Riley listened to are:  
> All Right Now – Free  
> Boys of Summer – Don Henley  
> Summer of 69 – Bryan Adams  
> Freefallin’ – Tom Petty  
> Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen  
> Rebel Rebel- David Bowie  
> Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac
> 
> Now, there are some who might say that Mac and Riley are too young to know the words to these songs but I would argue that these are some of the songs that you find you know the words to, at least the first verse and the chorus, just through hearing them when you are out and about and on soundtracks and in adverts. And even if Mac and Riley hadn’t learned the words through osmosis I’m sure that Jack would have insisted they listened to them, with some of them definitely appearing on his favourite mix tapes, including the Bowie song. I can see Jack as a David Bowie fan. Some of his more out there, avant-garde stuff might not be to Jack’s taste but I think he would love the guitar based foot stompers. I can definitely see Jack doing the Jagger step around the room to Rebel Rebel, I can’t be the only one.
> 
> If you would like to come and say hello or tell me your thoughts on road trip music on Tumblr I’m there as [Sky-larking](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sky-larking)


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